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malexI have an article in the current issue of WINDSURFING Magazine about the decline of the once wonderful online windsurfing forum known as rec.windsurfing, or “the windsurfing newsgroup” or “wreckdot” as it was affectionately called by sailors. During its peak years it was no big deal to see 2500+ messages posted in a month in wreckdot. I wrote the article a year ago, when traffic was down to about 50 relevant messages per month. Compare that to May of this year, when there was exactly one (!) windsurfing message posted in rec.windsurfing (congratulations Marc of the Baltimore Area Boardsailing Association). Given the timing, I should have renamed the article “Rec.Windsurfing: R.I.P.” Stick a fork in it.
Anyone who used to use rec.windsurfing knows what happened. In the article I say that trolls, the rude, and those who never shut up drove users away from recdot. Many former recdotters have found refuge in various manufacturers forums, iWindsurf and WINDSURFING Magazine’s forums etc where moderation helps keep things more civil, though in my opinion some of the old worst offenders in rec.windsurfing now lower the bar in iWindsurf’s forum. For my money the best online locations to discuss windsurfing these days are found at Boards Magazine and Seabreeze.
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As far as I can recall windsurfing had never had a "site". If it were to have one it would have been rec.windsurfing. About the closest thing we have here in SF is iWindsurf forum. Windsurfers are just too fragmented, too many disciplines, styles and preferences. Unlike surfing were all you need are waves and a big or small board or Mt. biking a bike that matches your taste in trails or even golf, windsurfing cannot have a common meeting place. It would be like using a formula board in overhead waves.
Just coming back to the water after about 5 years out- used to use rec.windsurfing all the time. Met some great people to sail with IRL there, and got all kinds of useful information about everything. Been wondering where everyone goes these days…
I don't doubt your attribution, but It might also be that the decline of usenet in general as people move to web forums more and more is also responsible (or may be the root cause of the causes you cite).
Shame to see it lost though; it was nice to have one central publicly sourced venue for the sport, rather than having people split up amongst a variety of private commercial sites.
Usenet was comprehensively (not just rec.windsurfing) killed, in great part by aggressive harvesting of email addresses from Usenet posts for spam lists, and by its association in later years as a conduit for distribution of porn and every manner of pirated works.
The loss of a central forum, organized by topic, is keenly felt, and not just for rec.windsurfing.
I ran into an early-mid '90s rec.windsurfing T-shirt in my closet just a couple of weeks ago.